Just try showing your child some discipline in public and somebody will drop a dime on you and you get a visit from child protective services in the next few days...
Spanking a kid has never killed anyone, as far as I know. I was spanked as a kid and when I was, I did deserve it and it was a good way to show that there are limits not to cross. I don't really understand the popular mindset now that education should be done entirely without touching your kid. There's a clear line between spanking and domestic violence. Let's not call a squirrel a rat.
> I don't really understand the popular mindset now that education should be done entirely without touching your kid.
And I don't understand the old mindset that think teaching a lesson requires physical violence. Discipline doesn't require physical assault, it really doesn't. The question isn't why not spank; the question is why spank when it's entirely unnecessary. Why do you want to hit children? Why do you think you need to? Is it fun to bully and intimidate a child into doing what you want? Do you need that?
As someone else here said, you need to watch some super nanny, violence is not the most effective way to discipline children. You can do better without hitting them. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Spanking is not "violence". Spanking has been done since the beginning of time. I fail to see how you can support your argument by the way by quoting Super Nanny (which I have watched many times and find entertaining..) Super Nanny is a TV with cherry picked families that are pre-screened to insure they are on the dart board (and parents are off the dart board) with respect to the techniques she uses. There is definitely a place in some families for what Super Nanny does. But that is not to say that there isn't a place for spanking of children.
My mom is a professor of early childhood education with decades of experience and I have discussed the show with her. While Super Nanny has all the obviously silly trappings of a reality TV show, the essentials of her disciplinary techniques are accurate to the modern understanding of how children develop and how they should be disciplined.
The fundamental misunderstanding in many homes is that discipline involves punishment. Discipline is in reality the process of teaching children how to manage themselves within society's rules. It is inherent in all aspects of child rearing. The most important aspect of discipline is to create and maintain a supportive, structured, healthy environment--and this is usually where Super Nanny starts: healthy meals at regular times, a set schedule every day, and clear rules that are enforced consistently.
So how to enforce the rules? Two recent developments in the understanding of childhood development pertain. First, the most important thing to a child is the attention and support of their parents. Therefore supportive attention is the greatest coin in enforcing discipline. This is why "time out" works so well.
Second, children--especially young children--learn far more from observation than they do from interaction. (Observation and recording is basically how the brain "boot-straps" the human mind in the first few years of life.) So parents should always model appropriate behaviors. This is why Super Nanny exhorts parents to always remain calm but firm. Parents who freak out teach kids that it's ok to freak out.
So consider spanking: it delivers a mixed message. The interaction is a negative reinforcement, but a) the parent is paying a lot of attention to the kid, and b) the parent is modeling that striking another person is sometimes an ok thing to do.
> Spanking has been done since the beginning of time.
Irrelevant. Slavery has existed since the beginning of time, that doesn't justify it. Racism has existed since the beginning of time, that doesn't justify it. Appeals to tradition are not a sound argument.
What do you define as violence exactly?
Pinching is violence too? Do you let your boys be #violent# during the recess? Because most kids are way more violent with other kids than just spanking. Do you do anything about that or just turn a blind eye to it?
Spanking has been around forever and has never had life threatening or civilization threatening implications. Why dont you compare spanking with nuclear weapons while you are at it?
"Spanking has been around forever and has never had life threatening or civilization threatening implications."
Thanks for making the point better than I did. The movement against spanking as being bad in such an absolute way is fairly recent. And, afaik, science has not backed this up.
I'm going to open a new thread with this old post on a spanking research by Carl "the numbers guy" Bialik in the WSJ a few years ago:
It's because some parents lack the intelligence or patience to differentiate. All some of them know is: do nothing... do nothing... then scream to correct behavior. When that doesn't work, things only get more destructive.
Just raising your voice can get you in trouble with people these days, or using any kind of physical restraint (for instance, to prevent immediate destruction of property)
